Density Lab

Density of Minerals Lab

Guiding Question: Does the density of a mineral depend on the size of the mineral sample?

Hypotheses: No the density of a mineral does not depend on the size of the mineral because density is a way of measuring how compacted  a solid is therefore it does not depend on how big it is.

Procedure: First my group and I weigh and work out the volume using the water displacement method and then we put the data into a graph and do the sum of the mass divided by volume for every rock to get the density for each of them.

	Mass (grams)	Volume (ml)	Density (D)
Rock A	19.5	7.0	2.8
Rock B	19.7	10.0	2.0
Rock C	12.7	4.0	2.8
Rock D	10.0	2.0	5.0
Rock E	1.5	0.5	3.0
Average	12.7	4.7	3.1

Data Analysis

The data that my group and I proved my hypotheses, “No the density of a mineral does not depend on the size of the mineral because density is a way of measuring how compacted a solid is therefore it does not depend on how big it is.” is correct. The only other thing I noticed about the data table is that rock B is heavier than rock A but rock A has a larger density than rock B.

Conclusion

I think that my group and gathered sufficient data to prove each of our hypotheses correct or incorrect. I think the data that my group and collected was very precise because sometimes with the water displacement method the person who filled the jug needed to refill it because it wasn’t exact. So as you can see we made exact measurements and I think we all did a very good job.

Further Inquiry

If I were to do this lab again I would use multiple minerals because it makes it more fun but I don’t think I would change anything else. But maybe I would change the size of the measuring jug because it was hard to fit under the tap. Now that I have done this lab I realize that density does not depend on the size of the rock and that you need to make exact measurements to get them all the same on the same type of rock, in my group’s case calcite. I now realize that the true density of Calcite is 2.71 D.